Friday, January 27, 2012

Remember my machine quilting table for my frames that Danny made me? They ended up in my bedroom as a storage rack for clothes and junk for a long time now?

Well the reason behind that was we had a glitch in them and all we ever did about that glitch was to discuss that one of these days we would do something about that glitch.

Last Sunday was that day!

I just had an epiphany of sorts and decided that I knew exactly what would work on that glitch and that I was way past ready to have these frames up and running and OUT of my bedroom.

So off we trek to Lowes and spend $8 on the glitch parts and then just simply move them........simple? ha! Simple in the fact that we just dropped everything that was on them and moved them!

I moved them to another temporary home in the side of my hair studio........ I know you are thinking that I am crazy but it works for now. Climate controlled and the lighting is superb!

Cramped yes, but right now is a really slow season for the business and I went for it and carved out an area and this building seems to have been built to be a quilting studio! LOL It's been everything, a greenhouse, a hot tub room, a hair salon and now a quilting studio! That's what you call getting your money's worth!!

This Fence Rail Quilt was started way back when he first built the tables so I could have a quilt ready in a flash to practice quilting with my new Juki and the frames at the same time.

Now after all this time, I have become really acquainted with the Juki TL98Q and love her! So when I put her in the frames this time I was very comfortable and I quilted this quilt in no time flat. I was so proud! I now have all the parts to the Juki HZL600 and she is wonderful too!

I have started a king size modern strip quilt in polka dots....giggle giggle... for my bed and the machine is awesome. I have another quilt in the frames now which is a made up pattern that I threw together one day and it turned out a bit wonky but not wonky on purpose.....get my drift? So I am practicing with a new pantograph on it and it's going quite well so far, seems there are some booboo's that you can quilt out!

I also have several quilts on their way here to "quilt for hire"!!!!!!!!!!!

That's always been my goal but it's been a glitch part away for a long time!

I have been spending a lot of time shooting the beautiful sunrises.

Yesterday morning instead of running outside in my PJ's to catch it, I got some clothes on and ran down the road about a mile and parked in front of this old farm..............well, the sunrise was pretty but the farm was prettier! This is owned by Danny's boss. I LOVE IT!

A bit of playing around with the editing!

With my macro lens.

heart

Have I ever told you that I love red barns?

Well I do!

This is the sunrise that got me started on my chase.......1/4/2012

Totally unedited!

This one made it to our local TV news channel for their evening weather!

I didn't know it but one of my neighbor/hair clients told me.

He works on this farm that is thru that gate and he said he knew where this was taken immediately!

1/14/2012

A Saturday morning and Danny was leaving to go cut firewood. As he left i was standing in the road in my PJ's and it was 14 degrees or so, as I started to shoot I noticed an orange line coming up horizontally and then in a few moments a vertical orange line crossing it. It kept getting bigger and bigger and I kept shooting............you should see all my pics in the timeline..........and suddenly there was a gorgeous orange cross in the sky overlooking my little town, my little farm and me!! Danny tried to call back to tell me to shoot it if I hadn't seen it. Morgan thought I edited it in my pics.........Oh no, there's only one person who could do that and we all know who HE is!

I felt so blessed and privileged to be able be standing here that beautiful morning!

1/25/2012

1/25/2012

1/25/2012

Yet another one made it on the evening news!

Of course I posted them on their Facebook page but they picked mine twice!!!!!!

This was yesterday, beautiful but not as breathtaking as the previous days!

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Remember when I purchased my new Juki and when it came from the factory NONE of the parts were in the box?

Well the super duper wonderful folks at sewingmachinesplus.com have been so wonderful trying to get me all my parts, however there has been a glitch somewhere along the lines and there is still one part that has not come in, the knee lifter. We can't exactly figure out why it is not wanting to hop in that truck and run on out here but it hasn't yet. Maybe it will decide to take that hike tomorrow? Not holding my breathe for it.

However, when I purchased the machine it came as a bundle with a $50 gift certificate.

Then after I had to call back and tell them that I had an almost useless machine without it's parts.....they decided that I should recieve another $50 gift certificate for all my troubles and for being so nice to work with.

With the rising cost of meats around my neck of the woods, if you are not the president you can't afford beef, so I have decided to pull out my old tricks for turning a cheap cut of beef into a delicious smack yo mama meal for the hubs.

Way back we used to always raise a beef for the freezer.

Then somewhere along the line a Dr told Danny that his cholesterol was too high and he listened to her and decided that we didn't need a freezer full of beef any longer, or pig......BOO HOO!

Back when we had the whole beef we had all the nice tender scrumptious cuts and the less desirable cuts such as round steak.

Less desirable depending on how it was prepared, that is.

Just so happens I married into a family of FABULOUS cooks that knew all about how to pound a steak and slather it with some great sauce or gravy and slap it in either a pressure cooker or a slow cooker, depending on how limited for time,and the outcome was an AWESOME dish that would please anyone!

To Danny these meals weren't any less valuable than the perfectly grilled T-bone!

To this day it is a fantasy of his, I know how he thinks and what he dreams about at work all day, to come home to a nice slow cooker full of Swiss Steak!

So around 5:30 PM today, give or take a few minutes either way, you may just hear a rumbling, growling, moaning, squalling, down right scary sound. You will think it's a noreaster moving thru or maybe even a winter tornado but have no fear, it's only Danny meeting head on with his fantasy! For the record, he also acts this way with my meatloaf, but so does Morgan, what can I say? I aim to please!

I have to admit my ways of making said Swiss Steak has changed over the years.

I now have one of those new fangled crock pots that cooks almost as fast as a pressure cooker and with me in the kitchen it has to be watched so I won't burn my meal. I already told you I can't afford beef! I also have really come to love cooking with Chicken broth and keep a box open in the fridge, or have my own homemade stock/broth in the freezer at any given time. I have stumbled upon Tomato Paste in a tube, probably Giada that taught me that one. This stuff is handier than sliced bread! Try it if you haven't! The possibilities are limitless!

Now to the wine......... I always love to cook with wine but since I am not a connoisseur of wine I usually don't even go down that aisle in the grocery store. I had Swiss Steak on my mind tho so I purposely made that trek on my last market day.

Actually........I just needed an excuse to use my gorgeous wine bottle stopper that I picked up somewhere at some cool wine bottle stopper store and haven't gotten around to using it yet.

Teehee! Cute, No?

LOVE!

My local convienence store has a great meat department in it and get this...... The name of the store used to be "Moran's Meat and Grocery"....or something like that. We moved to this town right around the same time the store was undergoing a remodel that included a new name. Yes the owner is some distant kin to Danny.They have these nice little pre made/ semi-affordable hamburger patties that we grab on occasion for that quick pan fried burger. That was last nights supper. There was one left over for me to have for lunch today and you all know how well a cooked hamburger patty warms up, right? Can you say shoe leather?However, I had just whipped up this awesome Swiss Steak concoction, I have to add spices until it is just so, and the sauce was out of this world. I decided on a whim to heat my burger patty up in a small skillet with a tad of this sauce to steam it in hopes of keeping the burger moist and flavorful. Well bless my heart, it turned into the best idea I have had today!

Danny and I have also recently made another discovery, seems we have decided that we like our hamburgers on white toast. Forget the hamburger buns! It's toast all the way for us!My friends this was one delicious burger, patty steamed to perfection with a flavorful tomatoish sauce with onions, green peppers and garlic all in the sauce, mayo and dill pickles!Mama was moaning and a groaning at lunch time and Daddy will be doing the same at suppertime! Watch out it might be scary!

Monday, January 9, 2012

WOW! All I can really say is WOW!! In my last post I gave you a new blog where you can go and read a story that I started to write. I started this out to be a test of my writing skills and see if I could get any feedback that would make me feel that I did have enough talent to write something that others would want to read. Well Bless my little britches, I can't believe the feedback that I have recieved from the first 3 chapters only of my story! (I have 4 completed at this time)

I recieved numerous emails, Facebook messages and phone calls telling me that I better get that story off of my blog, away from public access and not take a chance in someone else stealing my story! What? Me a writer? I am so overwhelmed! These comments came from all sorts of people leading all sorts of different lives, too. Not just my friends and family trying to pat me on the back with encouragement, these comments were genuine. Some folks sorta jumped thru hoops to get in touch with me in person to tell me how they felt about my writing, saying they could not express to me their true feelings online or in a text. Now that's flattering!

As I mentioned this story was started ad lib and I had no idea how long it would be and was not even sure what to call it, short story, novella, or a novel. Of course my goal was to someday write a novel and I have had several characters in mind for my first book. These characters were totally made up on a whim but it appears that people are so interested in these characters already that I need to finish out this story in book form and see where this leads.

This is certainly something that I have always wanted to do but was unsure if I could ever pull it off. Thanks to all the great encouragement of my friends, family and acquaintances I am now ready to make this a full time career. I have now blocked the other blog from public access but I will continue to keep you all updated as to how the book is going here at Sunny Morning Farm, along with all my usual shenanigans. Thanks for being here with me thru thick and thin. I think the next few miles are going to be pretty rocky before we reach our destination!